When any one of us — straight or gay, male or female, immigrant or citizen — is unsafe in the streets, we are all unsafe. When any one of us is silent when confronted with hate, we are complicit. These lines from Pat Parker’s “Where Will You Be?” echo in my mind:

Every time we watched
a queer hassled in the
streets and said nothing --
It was an act of perversion.

A powerful recording of poet Pat Parker reading “Where Will You Be?” at the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights is here, courtesy of John Frame (queerradio.org, Australia).

Where will we be when hate strikes? Where will we be when justice comes?